Renold rolls ahead

ENGINEERING firm Renold, which makes chains and gears used in rollercoasters, ship's engines and London Tube station escalators, climbed back into the black last year despite a slight dip in sales, it was announced today.

ENGINEERING firm Renold, which makes chains and gears used in rollercoasters, ship's engines and London Tube station escalators, climbed back into the black last year despite a slight dip in sales, it was announced today.

The Wythenshawe-based company, which employs almost 600 people in Greater Manchester, transformed pre-tax losses of é5.6m into profits of é4.2m in the year to March 29 - partly thanks to the euro.

Turnover fell one per cent, from é190.2m to é187.4m. The final dividend is 3p, making a total of 4.5p for the year.

Renold employs 550 people in factories at Bredbury, near Stockport, and Milnrow, Rochdale, and a further 27 at its head office in Wythenshawe. Globally, it has a workforce of almost 2,700.

Chief executive Ian Trotter said: "We have successfully restructured our machine tool business, which returned to profit against a background of dull economic conditions, and we have significantly reduced our cost base."

But he warned: "I don't believe the conditions today are any brighter, even though people are talking about a bounce-back after the war in Iraq."

Mr Trotter said Renold's UK operations, which account for 50 per cent of group production, had achieved cost-base savings and improved competitiveness by "adopting" the single European currency.

"We are, in effect, using it as our internal currency," he said.

"We are invoicing in euros. When we transfer products between our UK factories and our European sites, it is done in euros. We took this course of action so that we would not be disadvantaged when the euro came in, at a time when sterling was very strong.